


In The Year 2033

by xashesxashesx (fandomfatale)



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Timey-Wimey, Tyler family love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-03
Updated: 2011-12-03
Packaged: 2017-10-26 19:59:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/287283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandomfatale/pseuds/xashesxashesx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While traveling with Martha, the Doctor meets a mysterious woman from his future when the TARDIS lands in Cardiff in 2033. Takes place during the third series sometime before Utopia, but with general spoilers through the sixth series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In The Year 2033

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER: Doctor Who, its characters, its tools, its means of transportation, its places, etc. very clearly do not belong to me. I don’t make a profit of their usage here, but if knew how to I’m not saying I wouldn’t.
> 
> I did have to invent a few things – a planet, an alien species, a character that I think we all imagine will exist etc., which always makes one feel a little bit silly, but I think they’re adequate. 
> 
> This story is intended to be largely canon compliant (not with the deleted scenes, however), but there are a few very minor continuity errors that I am aware of and decided to leave in the story.

0000000000

 

_Typical_ , Martha Jones thought as the Doctor gestured vaguely at the upscale lounge’s bar and then went rushing off to speak to the young blond who’d just alighted there.

They had been scanning the room for the best person to question, but the second he’d seen this woman step out of the lift – graceful and gorgeous and _blond_ \- he had been preparing his beeline. Apparently he and Martha had differing views on who might prove to be the most informative.

After all, she’d only just _arrived_!

“It’s easy to look beautiful in a posh gold dress, isn’t it? But I wouldn’t get anything done in that – I’d get myself killed.” She dusted off the sleeve of her leather jacket. “ _I’m_ pretty too,” Martha said to herself with a hint not of sadness but of indignation, but also with an accepting sigh: the Doctor had a type. One time when she had been alone in the TARDIS she had asked it to show her a likeness of Rose, and now she knew what the Doctor saw in his mind when he became uncharacteristically quiet and his eyes turned unfocused and desolate.

The almost affectionate soft glow with which the TARDIS had shown the image of Rose, turning off all of the other lights in the bridge to highlight it further, had even suggested to Martha that the living ship herself missed the Doctor’s former companion.

_Preferred_ her.

“Why don’t you go talk to them?” the Doctor suggested indifferently, his back already turned to her, pointing at two men who appeared to be wait staff on break, leaning against the wall outside a bustling kitchen. She barely heard the last syllable as he left earshot.

The smooth jazz and dim-lighting of the lounge was far more appealing, and Martha wasn’t even convinced it was worth her time: they had yet to see anything amiss in the Cardiff of 2033, aside from the changes in clothing style and music which Martha thoroughly disapproved of, and a few flickering lights.

But the Doctor had insisted that if the TARDIS had brought them here, it was for a reason. The unscheduled stop had been at the whimsy of the ship. This was the Bevermark Hotel, and the TARDIS was now parked in the basement. Moving their way up through several floors of shops and restaurants had yielded nothing, and Martha was afraid the Doctor would have her in a maid’s uniform knocking on guestroom doors before the night was through, so she turned her attention to the two young men and hoped they would have something to tell her.

 

0000000000

 

“I don’t believe you’re supposed to drink that with ice,” the Doctor began conversationally, resting an elbow on the bar as he faced the woman. It was a friendly and relaxed pose that he found worked well in starting conversations.

“Is that your _ice_ breaker?” she teased with a critical but mischievous smile, swiveling towards him.

The smile instantly disappeared and she turned her back on him suddenly.

“Are you all right?” he asked, concerned, placing a hand on her shoulder.

She took another second, and then slowly rotated back towards him. “Thank you, I’m fine. Brain freeze,” she explained with a nervous laugh, shaking her iced drink. “I always have everything on the rocks, so I’m used to it.”

The Doctor frowned, no longer at her reaction, but simply at two beautiful cinnamon-colored eyes known to him somehow, on a face just as confusingly comfortable.

He straightened up, all pretenses momentarily fled. “Have we…met? You seem very… _familiar_.” He narrowed his eyes at her, examining her, probing those light brown eyes, searching for a truth and a memory.

She swallowed and then shrugged. “Must’ve.”

It was obvious enough that she was being cagey, but if her deception was out of anything it was fear. The self-possessed, elegant woman who had strolled over to the bar was gone: this creature was shaken to her core.

The Doctor crossed his arms. “Well, you see, I’m having trouble placing you, and I’ve got a good memory. A very good memory. A nearly perfect memory, actually. But I don’t know who you are.”

She glanced around the room, searching for someone or something. She didn’t find it. “Perhaps you knew my parents,” she offered, raising her eyebrows.

“Perhaps…” he replied thoughtfully. “Who are your parents?”

She returned her attention to her drink and swallowed it all in one gulp. “You’ll have to excuse me.” She rose from her stool and made a move for the door.

The Doctor stepped into her escape path, blocking her. “What’s your name?”

She hesitated. “Donna.”

“Is that really your name?” he challenged, suspicious of her pause.

She sighed. “My name _is_ Donna.”

“I knew a Donna once. A good woman.”

Donna bit her lip.

“What’s your last name?” he continued to interrogate.

“Smith.”

The Doctor blinked. “Smith? I’ve encountered far too many Smiths. Been one once or twice too.”

“It’s a very common last name,” Donna remarked matter-of-factly.

“Do you have another name? A middle name?”

Donna crossed her arms and frowned at him. “You’ve got a lot of questions, Mr…?”

“Doctor.”

“Dr…?”

“Just Doctor. The Doctor, when the occasion calls for it.”

“And that’s what people call you, then? _The Doctor_?”

“I’ve been called other things,” he admitted. “Come on, now. You trust me. Look at this face.” He pointed at his chin. “How can you not trust this face?”

Donna rolled her eyes. “Jacqueline.”

“Donna Jacqueline Smith? Your name is _Donna Jacqueline Smith_?” he demanded incredulously.

It had almost been Donna Méchante-Loup Jacqueline Smith, but she didn’t tell him that.

Looking acutely uncomfortable, Donna nodded. “Listen, I think maybe you should go, _The_ Doctor. I am getting _the_ bothered by _the_ presence of _the_ you.”

“There’s no need to be rude, Donna. Tell me, then: who are you parents?”

The Doctor ushered her into a booth and she reluctantly sat down.

“I’m sorry, Doctor, but I’m not going to tell you that.”

He considered her refusal. “OK. Why not?”

Donna didn’t say anything.

He waited a moment, then glanced down at something he was holding in his hands under the edge of the table. “ _Who_ are you?” he questioned, his eyebrows furrowed in disbelief.  

She swallowed and sighed. “I’m guessing you just scanned me underneath the table - which, by the way, I find to be rather an invasion of my privacy, but no matter - and I’m guessing you’re rather confused by your readings. What does it say?”

“’Not quite human’,” he relayed, perplexed. “ _Not quite human_? What does that even mean?”

Donna laughed. “That’s as accurate a description as I’ve ever heard.”

The Doctor lifted his hands and leaned across the table towards her. “Would you allow me to…?” he inquired, moving to place his palms against her temples.

She jerked away. “You had better not.”

“Donna, I thought I just saw Ma-“ began a young man, running up towards her. Once he arrived at the booth he saw the Doctor and froze mid-sentence. “Oh my God.”

“Who’s this?” the Doctor wondered impatiently.

“He never told us,” the young man marveled, observing the Doctor intently.

“I know,” Donna replied to him. “He had his reasons. He always has his reasons.”

“ _Who_ is this?” the Doctor repeated.

“Tony,” Donna finally answered, nodding her head towards the young man.

“Are you here _with_ Tony?” The Doctor looked the young man over. His resemblance to Donna was striking, he now noticed.

Tony laughed.

“That depends: are you trying to pick me?” Donna posed cautiously.

“ _Me_?” the Doctor asked. “Me? I, no, uh, no. No.”

“Oh God, he wasn’t, was he?” Tony asked, still laughing. “Tell me he wasn’t!”

Donna gave Tony a glare, and then turned back to the Doctor. “Good. Then no, I’m not here with Tony. Well not like that.”

“Is he your brother? Another Smith?”

“No, not a Smith. He’s my uncle. Uncle Tony.”

“What have you told him?” Tony asked.

“Nothing. And shut up.”

“He could help us.” Perfectly timed, the power went out for a few seconds and then popped back on. “He’s the only one who can,” Tony argued.

“It’s too dangerous. I shouldn’t even be talking to him right now but he won’t go away. What did you see? Was it the…?”

Tony shook his head. “No, it was M…” Tony regarded the Doctor, and scratched his head. “It was nothing.”

“Are you here with anyone, Doctor?” Donna asked.

“I’ve got a friend with me.”

“Who?”

“Martha Jones,” the Doctor answer, an edge of challenge in his voice.

Donna knew she should have pretended like she didn’t know the name, but she couldn’t help it. “Ah. Martha Jones. So that’s when we are.”

The Doctor stood. “I’ve had just about enough of this. Who are you? How do you know me? I’ve never met the two of you, I’m certain of it. Why are you ‘not quite human’?”

Tony laughed. “Not quite human?”

“The sonic screwdriver’s analysis,” Donna explained with a roll of her eyes. “This is serious, Tony. Stop laughing.”

“How do _you_ know about my sonic screwdriver?” the Doctor demanded.

Donna exhaled wearily. “My mother – Tony’s sister - is human. My father…is something else. More human than not, but…still _so_ alien in so many ways.”

“And you won’t tell me who they are?”

“I _can’t_ ,” she averred. I’m…I’m from the future.”

“You’re a time traveler?” the Doctor guessed, unsatisfied and frowning.

She shook her head and sighed, a little frightened. “No, Doctor: I’m from _your_ future.”

His eyes widened. “How old are you?”

“22.”

“You were born in 2011. That’s only a few years into my future." At least the way he had reckoning it since he had...befriended Rose. She had tethered him to the Earth. "If I don’t know your parents, I’m about to. Do I know them already, Donna? _Who are they_?”

“You know very well – better than I, in fact – that I shouldn’t even be speaking to you at all. The things I know…I could save _so_ many lives. Or I could undo my own existence.” She shook her head, lost and afraid. “Or perhaps if I don’t have this conversation with you, I’ll never exist. You must have remembered this moment. But I was never told I would be here. Doctor, why wasn’t I told?”

The Doctor reached out and placed his hand on her cheek. “You’re Rose’s daughter.”

Donna was afraid to admit to it, but he didn’t need her to. He knew it.

“I see it now,” he said softly. “It’s no wonder I was drawn to you. You’re so like her.” He smiled joyfully. “Rose has a daughter!” he shouted. He shook his head with unbridled happiness and laughed. “I told Donna, I said ‘she is _so_ alive’, and it’s true.” He removed his hand from her and placed it under his chin, tilting his head to examine her gleefully.

“Tell me: Is she happy?”

Donna nodded. “She’s so happy. Well, she will be. I suppose, right now for you, she’s bloody wretched.”

Then he glanced over at Tony, who had slid into the booth next to his niece. “And you’re Jackie’s boy! Tony Tyler!” Tony, understandably, bore more physical resemblance to Rose, though Donna moved like Rose had, and smiled like Rose had. It hurt the Doctor to watch her. It hurt the Doctor to be so close to Rose, through her family in this way, and yet to still be so far. This brush with her only opened old wounds, it did not fill them.

He took in Donna’s fair skin. “Mickey isn’t your father.”

“No,” Donna answered warily.

“Smith…”

“Don’t ask anymore questions, Doctor. It’s far too complicated to explain, and either way you already know too much.”

Rose’s daughter. From the future. From the parallel universe. Rose’s daughter who knew things she couldn’t possibly know. Rose’s daughter who was worried she would never be born if she told him the wrong things. The Doctor was scared of the excitement building inside of him. Of the hope.

The unspoken question hung in the air.

He listened to her reasoning and turned his thoughts another way. “You pretended not to know who I was. You knew exactly who I was.”

“Precaution.”

 “But how did you get here? How did you get here from the parallel universe?”

“You and I both know that you lied to my mother - to all of them - when you said that travel between parallel universes was impossible. You didn’t want her to get her hopes up. You wanted her to move on with her life. But I know about the time you spent trying to get her back. The hundreds of things you tried to safely build a bridge. The hundreds of times you failed. It was always too dangerous.”

The Doctor blinked back a stinging in his eyes. “I’ve told myself to give up, but I don’t seem to be able to.” His face was drawn, the longing of his hearts sucking the very life out of him.

Donna shook her head. “Neither can she. But you already knew that. A heart that isn’t ready to say goodbye never truly can, and she didn’t plan on ever saying goodbye to you.”

“She was the one who was going to stay…” he whispered.

“We crossed over on accident. Torchwood took an alien into custody – a Gnarvian. It was a moment where the two parallel universes matched up completely. The same Gnarvian was captured here, at the same time, on the same spot. The Time Lords knew that such intersection points were weak. I know you tried to create one,” Donna said softly. She shook her head sympathetically: “There were just too many variables. They’re impossible to manufacture.”  

“The two Gnarvians sensed each other,” Tony continued, “And as I’m sure you know, the Gnarvians have strong social imperatives. They drew on the energy of the Cardiff rift and opened a breach to reach each other. We were sucked in, and wound up here, along with three of them. Other parallel universes were involved. But our mothers came from here, and this was where we got stuck. Caprice of the 'void stuff', I suppose."

“You worked for Torchwood?”

“Family business,” Tony responded.

“I bet Jackie loves that,” the Doctor joked.

“You aren’t kidding,” Tony laughed.

“You’re trapped here?”

“We’ve been trying to create another intersection,” Donna explained. “It hasn’t been working.”

“That’s why the TARDIS brought us here – the Gnarvians. The intersection. You.” The Doctor indicated Donna with a toss of his chin. What the sonic screwdriver had picked up about her but couldn’t explain, what Donna knew but wouldn’t say – it had attracted the TARDIS. “The power fluctuations…”

Tony jumped in: “We know that the Gnarvians feed on electricity.”

“It makes them grow,” the Doctor explained. “On their home planet their only source for electricity is lightning and low-level electrical fields as generated by organisms. They’ll be able to feast here. Earth, with your dams and your windmills and your nuclear power stations. There’s no telling how large they could become. And they’ll never be full. They’ll shut down the planet. And then they’ll kill every last living thing.”

“The power failures are already dangerous. There was a tube crash this morning, and several traffic pile-ups. How do we stop them?” Tony asked. “We’ve tracked them here with Torchwood’s help.” He held up a portable electronic device registering the location of the three Gnarvians. “The Bevermark uses more electricity than any other building in the vicinity.”

“I have a date with the manager of the power plant,” Donna informed him. “But he hasn’t shown yet. We were hoping to cause a massive surge, drawing the Gnarvians there, and then sealing them into rubber traps. It’s the only idea we’ve got. They’re not much larger than dogs right now, but they’ve already doubled in size in the few days we’ve been here.”

“Not Blaidd Dwrg?” the Doctor asked, concerned and confused.

“Huh? Oh. Oh no. It’s just a distribution center, it doesn’t generate. It’s not a nuclear power plant.”

At that moment, Martha appeared in the entrance and waved for the Doctor to come over to her.

“It’s best if she doesn’t see us,” Donna said. “We know things about her future too.”

“I’m sending her to Torchwood. If she recalibrates the system there, I can use my sonic screwdriver to reverse the process the Gnarvians use to absorb electricity.”

“Causing a pulse?” Tony checked.

“It should be enough energy to re-open the breach that brought you here. There will a doorway, in the shape of you, so to speak. The walls between the dimensions will remember you. The pulse should suck you back to your own universe through the holes you created when you came here.”

“But will the breach close behind us?”

“Only if you destroy the intersection point. You’ll have to do something differently this time around.”

“And the Gnarvians?”

“How did they get to Earth in the first place? They’re hardly an intelligent species. I’ve never heard of Gnarvians going anywhere on their own.”

“Stowaways on a ship of Gnorthians from their home planet,” Donna explained. “They stopped here to vacation. They left the Gnarvians behind. Too dangerous to have on a space ship, you can imagine.”

The Doctor began making his way over to Martha. “You two stay here. And when I say stay here, I actually mean it. Your mother never seemed to grasp that.”

“He’s so young!” Tony uttered, watching the Doctor’s retreating form.

“It’s so odd, to see him look at me the way he does.”

“He’s got the hots for you. You look like Rose, the woman he’s in love with.”

Donna pulled a piece of ice from her glass and flung it at him. “He does not have ‘the hots’ for me. And anyway, that’s not what I mean. It’s strange to see those eyes not recognizing me. To not see the love there that you see in a father’s eyes when he looks at his daughter. You know what I mean. Doesn’t it feel weird, that he doesn’t know who you are? That he doesn’t _love_ you.”

“Don’t worry, Donna. We’ll see your Dad again. The Doctor is going to help us get home. I just think it’s incredible: the Doctor and Martha Jones, crossing paths with us.”

“It’s less of a coincidence than it seems. We’ve drawn the TARDIS here.”

“He would take us somewhere in the TARDIS if you asked him to,” Tony urged.

“There’s no time. The Gnarvians are too dangerous, and we only have this one chance to get back home.”

“He has a _time machine_. We’ve got nothing but time.”

“It can’t happen,” Donna insisted. “This is the past. He’s with Martha and they’ve got things they need to do.”

“Poor Martha. The way she looks at him.”

“Poor Uncle Mickey. He never loved a woman who didn’t love the Doctor.”

“They’re happy. We saw that. And Donna, even though she had to sacrifice her memories. Everyone our parents had to leave behind. Now we get to go home and tell them that everything worked out, and everyone is happy. All the cousins I’ve never met. Even your mum’s old mate Shireen.”

“ _He’s_ not happy.” Donna indicated the Doctor with a flick of her elbow. “He’s miserable. Dad always seemed so sad when he looked up at the stars. But it was never like this. His _eyes_.”

“Well of course he’s gutted – you’re droning on about his lost love and his inability to find her again.” Tony paused. “Why do you think he never told us?”

“I guess because he knew he hadn’t? Mum always wondered how the Doctor could have left her the way he did. She finally understood that it was for the best, but she never could get her mind or her heart around how the Doctor decided so quickly and so certainly to leave her with Dad. But it was because of this moment, because of _me_ and what I told him.” Donna shook her head in disbelief. “When he left Mum and Dad on the beach at Bad Wolf Bay, he _already_ knew that they would have a daughter, and that they would be happy.”

“And now we know he regenerated not too long after that.”

A couple of silent tears ran down Donna’s cheeks. “Maybe it was for the best. He had said too many goodbyes. He needed peace.”

“Looks like saying goodbye to your mum is what did him in. She’ll be happy to know he wasn’t off falling in love with other women. He died instead, as true to her as he ever was.”

Donna shook her head at him, a few more tears rolling freely. “You’re too much like Grandad sometimes,” accused scathingly. “Mum wouldn’t have wanted him to be alone. She loved him. That was what she cared about. She worried about him being alone. She would have wanted him to move on, like she had.”

“We both know your mother never fully moved on. But then neither did your Dad. They both missed the TARDIS, and the traveling, and saving the world. And I think there are a few darker angels in your mother’s nature who will be pleased that _her_ Doctor died instead of moving on, his strongest echo left with her. I’m sort of pleased myself, though when I became such a sucker for a love story I couldn’t tell you.”

“My father is more than an echo.”

“I didn’t mean that. You know I don’t think that. I only meant that most of what remains of the Doctor your mother loved and traveled with is with us - in our home and our family. This new Doctor with his new face – he’s not the same man. Not really. Not _enough_. River Song saw that when she met him too early.”

Donna laughed at him. “Sometimes I think you remember the stories Dad told us better than I do. _I’m_ the one who almost maybe sort of has an almost maybe sort of part Time Lord brain.”

“You’re trying to get back at me for the all the times I called you an alien as kids, aren’t you?”

Donna shrugged playfully. Then she turned solemn for a moment. “Mum _will_ be happy to hear he wasn’t alone for too much longer.”

“He changed, and then he met Amy Pond, and River Song. A new Doctor. A new life. I almost wish we could tell him.”

“Why don’t you just hand over all of Torchwood’s archives, and then we could go open up the inside of the TARDIS and look into the Time Vortex and tell him everything else there is to know.”

“Easy, now, Don.”

“Easy for you, you’re already born in the Doctor’s personal timeline. My Dad doesn’t even properly exist yet. We have to be careful.”

“I know, I know. It just sounds like things were so dark for him towards the end. I wish Donna’s grandfather would have told us more.”

“I’m amazed he told us as much as he did, because he nearly killed us when he started asking Donna about when she left the Doctor. I still have the bruise from where he hit me.”

“He had his reasons, we now know. I’m glad he was there for the Doctor in the end, as much as he could be.” Tony laughed suddenly.

“What is it?”

“Martha is giving you _such_ a death glare.”

The Doctor came back over to the booth. “All right, we’re going to the power station to trap some Gnarvians. Martha and I will take them back to the Gnorth planet in the TARDIS once the breach has been closed. That will cancel out the intersection. We’ll have to anchor them here in this universe, but that shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve done it before. I’m sending you two home!”

Donna jumped up and hugged the Doctor. “This isn’t a thank you hug. It’s just because you need one. And the world is full of people who wish they could always be there to give you one when you need it. Most of all me and my Mum.”

The Doctor shook his head at her in wonder. “Rose’s daughter.”

“Can we see the TARDIS first?” Tony begged.

“I don’t suppose you’d fancy a trip?” the Doctor posed timidly.

“We can’t,” Donna declared. “Why am I the mature one here? I’m by far the youngest. You’re the Time Lord! We _can’t_ go!”

“But we could at least go see it, Donna!”

Donna began giggling as she gave in. “We’re gonna see the TARDIS! _The_ TARDIS!”

“Follow me!” the Doctor led.

A quick trip down in the lift brought them right to the resting ship.

“Oh my God,” Donna exclaimed, sliding her hand up the blue siding.

“Go on, open it!” Tony insisted.

The Doctor unlocked it, and Tony flew past him, grabbing Donna excitedly and pulling her inside.

Donna gaped for a full minute, just taking in the view, while Tony touched everything he could get his hands on.

“Look! It’s exactly the same!” he cried, pointing at the console.

“What does he mean?” the Doctor asked, moseying in behind. 

“We had a play TARDIS. Other kids had treehouses, we had a police box with a spaceship/time machine dashboard.” She laughed and shook her head. “It wasn’t bigger on the inside, though.”

The Doctor smiled warmly.

“We used to play at your adventures,” Donna continued. “The Slitheen. Grandad wouldn’t let us do Cybermen, and Mum wouldn’t let us do Daleks. But we did werewolves. And Ood. Tony was always the Doctor.”

“Who were you? The companion?”

“I wish! He always made me be the monster.”

The TARDIS glowed and hummed for a second.

“She likes you,” the Doctor deciphered.

“Well yeah, Rose got pretty intimate with the TARDIS, didn’t she? And Don’s Dad…” Tony began. He stopped.

The Doctor didn’t ask a follow-up question, though his eyes were burning. Donna bit her lip; she couldn’t very well say that her father had been created in the TARDIS, that the Doctor wasn’t her father, but that he _wasn’t not_ her father either. That she wasn’t a Time Lord but that she was enough Time Lord to be ‘not quite human’.

“If you had a mind to run away with her, she might even go with you,” the Doctor mused. He stroked the console of the ship. “Not many people could steal my TARDIS.”

Donna smiled.

The lights outside the door flickered.

“The Gnarvians! We have to go.” Donna sighed.

“How about we take the TARDIS?” the Doctor asked with a smile.

 

After a pit stop at Torchwood to pick up weaponry, they landed at the power station. With the sonic screwdriver, it wasn’t much trouble creating the power surge. All of the lights went off in the city.

“Oops,” remarked the Doctor, looking out the window. “I might have overdone it.”

“Here,” Tony said, handing him a gun.

“I don’t like these. What is this? A _bazooka_?”

“Relax. It shoots rubber netting. Well, it’s not actually rubber, it’s a very similar covalent compound. It’s not important. You can understand why it couldn’t be smaller.”

Donna’s gun dwarfed her. She positioned herself one floor up, hanging over the balcony. The central control room was as good a place as any to set-up. It sat on top of the core, at ground level. 

It was silent while they waited, except for the hum of the machinery. The lights in the city began to come back on, block by block.

“We’re on an adventure with the Doctor!” Tony exclaimed.

“Is he always this excited?” the Doctor asked. “Not much like his parents, is he?”

Donna laughed. “You only pretend not to like Gran.”

“I might, _maybe_ , miss Jackie a _little_. Don’t you dare tell her I said that.”

“My lips are sealed.”

The translucent Gnarvians were difficult to spot until they began to feed, but they were lucky and the creatures found their way into the control room first. They began to sense the power running through the cables that departed from that central hub.

“On three!” the Doctor called out. “Take out the one nearest you.”

They shot true.

The Gnarvians struggled in the netting.

“It won’t hold them for long!” called out Tony, dragging one towards the TARDIS.

“We’ve got to hurry before they break the netting,” Donna urged, leaping from the second floor. She was barefoot now, having left her high heels in the TARDIS.

“Ha!” the Doctor cheered. “Your mother saved my life swinging from a rope. I bet she told you that.”

“One of her favorite stories. Under Sevens Gymnastics Team – she got the bronze! I think she told us more often about the metal than saving your life, though. Don’t you think, Tone?”

Tony laughed. “Well, I got such good marks – she had to brag about something or I would have been the favorite child.”

Donna collected the guns while the Doctor and Tony pulled the remaining two Gnarvians into the TARDIS.

“To Torchwood!”

 

Cardiff was a difficult town for the Doctor to be in. Too many memories. Too many memories of Rose. It was one thing to make a pit stop in the TARDIS and charge up, but to walk the streets…

But Torchwood was even worse.

He didn’t even think he was physically capable of entering Canary Wharf. Floor 45 haunted his dreams. So, for once, he was glad to be in Cardiff and not in London.

“All ready,” Martha announced as the three of them piled out of the TARDIS.

“Did they give you any trouble?” the Doctor asked, looking around the room.

“They were able to see right through the psychic paper, but the fact that I had it impressed them enough that they let me do what I needed to do. And apparently a man named Jack Harkness left a standing order that we were to be assisted in any way. Not just you – me too! Who’s Jack Harkness?”

The Doctor frowned. “I suppose we’ll be running into him one of these days.”

“Mum brought Jack back from the dead,” Donna boasted.

Martha had heard enough about what Rose had done.

“Show me where you came through,” the Doctor ordered.

Tony and Donna went to stand in the exact same spot where they had found themselves in another dimension.

“You really think this will work?” Donna asked.

The Doctor smiled at her. “Everything I do works. You should know that.”

He came over to stand by her, unsure of exactly how say goodbye. He stuck his hand out to her Uncle. “Tony.”

Tony shook it aggressively. “It was an honor, Sir.”

“He’s polite too!” the Doctor mockingly remarked. “Never heard Rose or Jackie call me ‘Sir’. Did Pete hire a nanny?”

“You shush now!” Donna scolded. She poked him affectionately on the shoulder. “The Tylers will always be your family. Even Tylers you've only just met. And even when you can’t be with us, we’ll always be thinking of you. There’s always a chair for the Doctor at our table.”

The Doctor couldn’t hear anymore. He leaned in suddenly and kissed her on the forehead. “Til the future,” he said, backing away towards Martha. “Ready?”

They nodded.

He left the Gnarvians in the TARDIS so that they would not be pulled into the other dimension, then pointed his sonic screwdriver at Torchwood’s medical scanning system which Martha had set up to direct its radiation right inside the TARDIS door. The aliens began hissing as the wave hit them, and then a burst of electricity flashed through the room as they discharged all of the electricity they had ingested.

And Donna and Tony were gone.

“Good work, Martha,” the Doctor complimented, nodding at her calibration with approval.

“That was Rose’s family?” Martha asked. She felt bad about being so ill-disposed towards the girl earlier. Rose’s daughter? Of course the Doctor had gone straight to her.

“From the future, yeah. Her brother and her daughter," he informed stiffly.

“I’m sorry you had to say goodbye to them so soon.” She set her hand comfortingly on his shoulder.

“Yeah…”

The Gnarvians were no longer struggling, and the bags had collapsed into a third of the size.

“Are they dead?” she asked.

“Did I overdo it again?” The Doctor shook his sonic screwdriver and looked it over. Then he bent down and put his hand against the netting. “No. Good! They’re still alive. Hurry, get in the TARDIS. Allons-y! To Gnorth!”

 

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Tony and Donna hugged when they saw the familiar surroundings of _their_ world around them.

Donna laughed when she looked down at her feet. “I left my shoes in the TARDIS.” She gasped. “Dad bought me those shoes! They were the ones I was wearing when we crossed over. He must have known when he bought them. He must have recognized them.” She laughed again.

“A memento for the Doctor,” Tony commented.

“Let’s go home. All the things we have to tell them – I don’t even know where to begin.”

 

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THE END

 

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End file.
